Urgent need for new leaders

This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah, but in my area the new year began under the shadow of failing services: no electricity at the start of the weekend and no water by Sunday night. It wasn’t loadshedding, nor was it scheduled water or power outages. It was simply more failures, and more problems to manage. We are so used to losing one essential service or the other that we no longer have the energy for outrage. We just deal with it because this is Johannesburg and, unfortunately, this is what we’ve come to expect. 

After Rosh Hashanah ended on Sunday evening, I went to a garage shop to buy a couple of five-litre bottles of water to sustain us until we could make another plan. I chatted to a Sowetan woman who works at the shop and told her about our situation. She said she understood because, living in Soweto, she still has loadshedding. In fact, she said, loadshedding has never stopped for her. 

I was astonished as I didn’t know this. She said that most days she doesn’t have power either between 05:00 and 09:00 or 17:00 to 22:00, or both. I asked what her councillor was doing about it, knowing full well that my ward councillor may stand on his head or threaten lives, but he has little or no impact on outages. It doesn’t help that he is a Democratic Alliance councillor. 

She said she knew her councillor and he was fighting, but nothing made any difference. 

I said hopefully this would change after the elections. She laughed at me, saying she doesn’t believe in politics or politicians. They are all the same. 

I asked if she planned to vote. She said she thought she might but didn’t think it would help much. I suggested that voting was the only real chance of changing the situation, but she wasn’t hopeful. She ultimately told me she would vote and made it clear it would not be for the African National Congress (ANC). I didn’t know whether she truly meant it, or whether she was simply telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. After all, customer service experts tell us the customer is always right. 

That brief conversation stayed with me because it said so much about where we are as a city and as a country. It wasn’t only about water, electricity, or one woman’s daily experience of loadshedding. It was about the exhaustion that sets in when people stop believing that any leader, party, or councillor can make their lives better. 

I left the shop feeling unsettled, and worried. We are now in our Jewish new year and we have one and a half months until local elections. The ANC leading our government has failed us so dismally and I cannot imagine that anyone doesn’t see this. I cannot believe every South African doesn’t feel the same dismay I do. It isn’t a race, religion, or gender issue, it is a South African problem. Johannesburg – or Gauteng, and I cannot speak specifically about any other province – is in a shocking state. Our infrastructure is failing badly. Our roads are in a horrible condition and there are burst water pipes all over the city. Half our street lights don’t work and neither do many of our traffic lights. We have such serious unemployment and beggars on every corner who are clearly desperate. 

To so many of us, it’s obvious we have to change our government. We have to ensure that whoever comes into power in Johannesburg and Gauteng is hardworking and determined to fix this place. That’s the only way we are ever going to sort out our problems. 

We need a leader who is determined to do what needs to be done to fix infrastructure and put into place whatever is needed to build this city and province to their true potential. 

We don’t need someone who’s going to focus on racial issues or with their heads stuck in the Middle East. We need someone who’s focused on our city, province, and country. They cannot be worried about any peripheral issues or international problems, they need to be hardegat and focused on what needs to be done. 

I have to say that every part of our infrastructure seems to be crumbling at the moment. I am shocked that it has taken the murder of seven or eight women for police to start considering that there is a serial killer on the loose in the Kempton Park area. 

Having once upon a time been a crime reporter, I know how many serial killers we’ve had in this country and we aren’t, or certainly weren’t, short of expertise in finding such criminals. My first question to the police would be: were DNA and forensic profiles compared across the cases? Were missing person reports crosschecked against the unidentified bodies? Were comparisons of the different crime scenes done? Was the investigative psychology unit brought in and when? If not, why not? 

We’ve had around 12 convicted serial killers in the past 20 years. In fact, the police have identified 170 murder series since the 1990s, according to research by Gerard Nicholas Labuschagne, a Doctor of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. This is why South Africa has real expertise in this area and has been able to solve a lot of these crimes. 

We still aren’t sure it is a serial killer this time, and yet the number of dead half-naked women being found keeps climbing. 

I would like to believe that within the next few days we will have some answers about these murders. I would like to believe that the experts in the South African Police Service are still at the top of their game. I want to believe this, but time will tell. 

As we head towards Yom Kippur at sunset on Sunday, a time of reckoning for all of us, I would like to believe that it augurs well for the future of Jozi, Gauteng, and the whole country. I pray that the year will begin with good news and that it escalates through the year. 

Next Thursday is Heritage Day, a day on which we specifically celebrate our different cultural backgrounds, as well as our shared heritage. We do it with pride as South African Jews who love our country and our home, and who celebrate this amazing country of ours. South Africa has endless potential and all it will take is the right leadership to guide us into the future. 

Here’s to new, capable, focused leaders and to developing our city into a place we can once again be proud of and that will attract many investors. 

I wish you all Gmar Chatimah Tova, Shabbat shalom, and Happy Heritage Day! 

Peta Krost 

Editor 

PS: We won’t be publishing a newspaper next week because of the chaggim and the public holiday. We will be back on 1 October. We will continue to send online-only newsletters.